King of the New Orleans Keyboard

The provenance of this particular session is sketchy, but the music is superb. Some experts say it was recorded in Hamburg in 1977, but it could just as easily have come from one of James Booker's myriad appearances at New Orleans nightspots during the same period. There's a lot of pep to these performances, and they don’t delve into the languid, rough-edged melancholy that would become a signature—and sometimes pinnacle—of Booker’s hometown performances. (Then again, after hearing this rendition of “Ain’t Nobody’s Business,” you might beg to differ.) Instead, you get him in hammering, propulsive mode with “Classified,” “One Hell of a Nerve,” and “Harlem in Hamburg,” the last of which resembles some unholy union of James P. Johnson’s stride piano and Chuck Berry’s bumpkin exuberance. Booker was so virtuosic that songs like “Put Out the Light” sometimes get overlooked. The essence of timing and simplicity, this brief instrumental crystallizes the Crescent City style.